Alchemi: A .NET-based enterprise grid computing system

Computational grids that couple geographically distributed resources are becoming the de-facto computing platform for solving large-scale problems in science, engineering, and commerce. Software to enable grid computing has been primarily written for Unix-class operating systems, thus severely limiting the ability to effectively utilize the computing resources of the vast majority of Windows-based desktop computers. Addressing Windows-based grid computing is particularly important from the software industry's viewpoint where interest in grids is emerging rapidly. Microsoft's NET Framework has become near-ubiquitous,for implementing commercial distributed systems for Windows-based platforms, positioning it as the ideal platform for grid computing in this context. In this paper we present Alchemi, a NET-based framework that provides the runtime machinery and programming environment required to construct enterprise/desktop grids and develop grid applications. It allows flexible application composition by supporting an object-oriented application programming model in addition to a file-based job model. Cross-platform support is provided via a web set-vices interface and a flexible execution model supports dedicated and non-dedicated (voluntary) execution by grid nodes.